He Teaches Bows And Arrows
by Jeiq
Summary: Ah, post-LOTR General/Romance? No, it's a one-sided love, and Legolas stays safely out of it, and it ends peacefully. Rated for one swear word used.


I'm sure Legolas had a more positive influence on girls, aside from sending us into frenzies. Well, he didn't do that, did he; that was Mr Bloom at work. This is, I suppose, a realistic self-insert; heck sure I can froth at the mouth and say 'So _yau yeng_ (cool)!' but I'm not going to end up Princess of Mirkwood, am I. No, I'd rather... just... sing! (sorry, brief digression into Monty Python-land). And, in keeping with the 'romance' tag on this, Legolas's name is followed by the words 'kiss' and 'girl'. And the girl isn't named, either. Oooh, suspense. Love that. Ta. 

He was always so sad. 

I was in love with him for a while. You always fell in love with him; you couldn't help it. If you were a kid, it felt like the first true and crushing and holy love you'd ever had; if you were an older girl and you'd had boys before, it felt like finding the top boy of all those boys; and if you'd had men, then you'd feel like men were nothing, and it was only boys that you could love. They say the King was an awesome and wonderful man, and to look upon his face was to see all the goodness and majesty in the world, but I wouldn't know because I'd only look at his friend. 

The other girls stopped looking when they found other boys to sink their teeth into. There were some good-lookers in the midst of all the armour-stink of the officers, and there were some really sweet faces amongst the courtiers. But they'd never look at me, and I didn't want them. 

And they made fun of him, whenever they could get a chance; their tongues'd lay hold of him and stone him to death with clever words and puns, just for being different and because they were jealous, that he was so pretty and that all the girls couldn't stop talking about him. All the time he'd be standing up there beside the King, looking like he was on the last turn of the rack but smiling because his friends were watching. I never could bear it. I'd always go away and make sure something spilled over at least one of the boys, the careless crude boys who thought they were so awfully clever. 

I'd do all the things I could do to get in his way and under his feet and all over the place. I wanted to make my face familiar to him. It's not a bad face; it's just scary, they say, because the eyes are too dark and the rest is too pale. Vampire-scary. I didn't want him to think I was after his blood. They said you could live forever if you took his blood. I didn't want to live forever, because I knew it wouldn't be living with him. I just wanted a smile, one of those sweet smiles that lifted his whole face and made the air feel fresher around you; maybe I wanted him to say my name, hello and my name, and then maybe he'd tell me his name, although I knew it already, everyone knew his name. And then. And then I don't know. I just wanted the smiles, and when I got the smiles I started to want him asking my name, and that I never got because I knew he didn't _want_ my name; I don't know what he wanted, except that he did want something and he wanted it awful badly. It shows, you know. It showed pretty clearly in the way he stood by the King's side, like he was glad to be there but all the time wishing he was somewhere else, some place where he knew he should be. It made you ache to put your arms around him and give him a big hug and then take him away somewhere and do something awfully private and awfully intimate to him. To make him happy. Because he was never happy. 

I pretty much knew that if I did wind up stuck with someone, the way girls are supposed to get stuck with guys, who it would be, and it wasn't him. I was the scary girl in the palace; this was the scary guy. This, Enrio, the one that all the girls didn't want, not because he was ugly but because he looked like he would bite a girl as soon as he would kiss her. He didn't know how to talk to girls and he didn't talk much to the boys, either. Everyone else had it figured out that Enrio and I were made for each other. Not us. We didn't talk. Didn't dance. Didn't even bother sitting together at table. He wasn't ugly at all, Enrio. Just. His eyes. Like mine. Dark. Scary, they said. 

I think he was more scared than scary. 

The first time he said something to me was in fighting class. I was playing with swords; I like swords, the light thin long ones, I like the way they cut clean and neat through the air and they hardly take any effort to swing. I had a fine fight going with one of the courtier boys and he was hell-mad because he couldn't be beaten by a girl, but I didn't give a sod about his delicate sensibilities; I was going to get him flat on his skinny arse in another minute and then Enrio started shouting, oi oi oi, and we had to break off because he barged into the middle of the fight. The courtier boy ran away. I guess me and Enrio combined, four scary eyes, that was too much for him. Enrio looked at the sword I had and I looked at him; he was carrying a bow and a quiver with arrows in it, but he was holding it out, not carrying it. 

"Trade," he said. 

"Fuck off." 

"He teaches bows and arrows," Enrio said, and then he dropped his things at my feet and held out his hand for the sword. I don't know why I gave it to him. It was a _good_ sword. 

"Who teaches bows and arrows?" I asked when I had the bow and quiver picked up, and Enrio was testing the weight of the sword. He looked at me and he didn't say anything. Just a long stare and then he turned around and went away. 

Legolas taught bows and arrows; Legolas Greenleaf, his long hair tucked behind pointed ears, his smile always with some pain in it, like someone twisting him on a rack with the King watching him anxiously hoping he was all right. I turned up for class, and he saw me and smiled and asked me what my name was. 

I spent all my time on the range shooting my arms off, which was better than previously running around in the sword-arena shooting my mouth off at opponents that wouldn't fight right because I was a girl, or because they were girls. You need someone to fight with when you're playing swords. You just need a point to shoot at with a bow. It's an awfully bad weapon to give to someone who's more anti-social than a dead squirrel to begin with, but it's a beautiful art. There's this point, see, and you have to figure how high you're going to shoot, and then you have to remember if you're shooting outdoors, there's the wind, and then you have to feel the arrow in your hand and account for how heavy that is, because that's going to make it fall funny if you're shooting high. 

And then there's shooting for speed. Legolas made it look like dancing, like a dancer with all the right moves choreographed just right, only his moves were made up on the spur of the moment with the stage shifting around him as enemies fell and other enemies moved in. When the target's near, he said, use a knife, but keep an eye out for your friends and the bow ready to fire, because that's what the archer does; he keeps an eye out for the things that only he can shoot. Sometimes you change the whole world when you notice one small movement in the background. 

After he started teaching me to shoot, I couldn't stay in love with him any more. It was going to wear off anyway, and when I started spending more time with the bow than looking for him, I figured I was cured of that for good. Sure there was always a feeling, like something jumping inside you, when you looked at that face, saw how perfect it was, how clean and pure the lines and how soft and lovely the eyes. But it was just a face, and he'd never let anyone get close enough to see anything else but the face. 

When he told us stories about shooting, then, maybe, he'd loosen up; then, maybe, you'd see something shift in his face, memory laid bare in his eyes. Maybe he was thinking of some girl that he'd saved, her lips that he kissed; maybe he was thinking of a war that he'd fought in, his friends from those days. And the names of those places that he'd been to, they drove me _crazy_. I'd lie awake at night, like I always did, only this time I'd stopped thinking about him and started going to all those places, in my head. 

"How do you get there?" I asked him, one day, after he'd finished telling the class about some cool trick that he'd pulled off, deep inside a cave in a mountain. 

He laughed, and the rest of the class laughed along, too. I waited for them to finish and I said it again. No one laughed this time, but he was the only one who wasn't starting to feel scared; he put his head on one side and looked up into the sky. It was a half-grey day, clouds piling up thick and no blue anywhere expect all over the faces of the people. He said, "It's too far away and it's not the same any more." 

"So no one does anything like what you did any more?" 

"I don't know. I suppose there are evil things left in the world, and there are people left to fight them. But I don't know if there are any back in those places." 

"I'll tell you where there are, then." 

Someone started to laugh, choked, stopped. It's like starting to play the Wedding March at a funeral, realising, changing tune with your face turned away from everyone. He looked at me and he said, "You plan on going out into the world." 

Oh, I liked the way he said it; not a question, just a statement, almost one hundred percent fact, just hesitating to be absolutely positive. When I said, "Sure," he nodded and said, "The roads of the world are long and dangerous, even without evil; humans know well how to make their own troubles. I wish you well, and hope you find yourself free of all troubles, darkness-sent or man-made." 

He knew how to make a good speech, that one. Such a sad one. Such a good one. I think that was the last time I'll ever see him; I'm miles away from the palace now, miles away from the giggling girls and the silly boys and Enrio, his dark eyes truly frightened now in his thin face because he thinks he'll be alone for good now, Enrio that I returned his bow and quiver to before I left. He could have come along, but he was too afraid; he's never known anything else except palace life, and sometimes I remember him looking at the daughter of the King, lovely and fair and red-haired, the way I used to look at Legolas. 

I have my sword back. It's old but it's good, and anyway, I'm supposed to be part of the bodyguard of this visiting Queen who's now going back to her kingdom, far away; I'm sure I'll be able to get a new bow, some time soon. And there's a boy who's quiet and serious, who writes letters for the Queen; maybe I'll talk to him about the poetry and stories that he reads for the Queen, because he's not scared of me, he's all right. But I don't care much about anything now. It's enough to be here and free and going where I want to go and doing what I want to do. 

And I wish, for his sake - he who gave me the bow, and also he who taught me how to use it - _especially_ he who taught me to use it, Legolas of the great and terrible sadness - that he might be free to do the same. 


End file.
